Cutter (Gail McCarthy Mystery series) (4 page)

Walking up and down the barn aisle, I stepped into the stalls of the horses I'd treated this morning, taking their pulse and respiration, checking for any abnormal signs. There were none. The poison (if there was a poison, I added to myself) had apparently been something which had caused the horses to have a major digestive disturbance. In some cases their intestines had ruptured from the pressure, which had killed them. In the cases where they hadn't ruptured there seemed to be no further problems once the colic effect had passed. I made a mental note to tell the lab to check for atropine in the blood as well as the other poisons, as atropine was the only drug that struck me as likely to have just that effect.

When I was done I stood in the aisle for a second, hearing the peaceful rustle and stamp of the horses in their stalls, smelling the warm, sweet familiar smell of a barn. This barn had been built by Ken Resavich, the owner of the ranch, a few years ago and was state of the art, in its way. It was a metal building (horses eat wood) with concrete floors, fully enclosed stalls, tack room, feedroom, bathroom, wash rack, office-all immaculate. There was not so much as a stray horsehair or a clod of dirt in the concrete-floored breezeway that ran between the stalls, let alone a pile of manure; two Mexican men were employed full time to keep it that way. The general effect, I thought, was unpleasing-a little too antiseptic-looking. The place smelled like a barn, but it didn't feel like one.

I wandered back outside to lean on the fence and watch Casey.

He had opened the arena gate and was turning the cattle back out into their pasture. The leggy sorrel colt he was riding was high-headed and wild-eyed and danced underneath him with barely contained energy. Casey held the horse with a firm hand while he watched the cattle file out the gate. I watched them too, checking automatically that none were lame, that all looked slick and healthy.

Late afternoon sunshine lit up the round hills of the ranch with just that long slant to it that meant summer had turned into fall. The crossbred cattle fanned out across the holding pasture, their backs deep red and black against the washed-out yellow of the grass. Casey loped the frantic-looking sorrel colt in half circles around them, pushing them toward another gate. I could hear him yelling-the wild "hoo-aw" that was his trademark.

Looking out to the west, where the hills rolled away open and empty toward the blue of the Monterey Bay, dark green oak trees in the ravines, I wished I could afford a ranch like this. Even a ranchette. Somewhere with some space, where I could keep my horse. At the rate I was progressing economically it wouldn't happen until I was about fifty. Practicing as a veterinarian on salary was just managing to pay my bills; even the payments on my definitely low-end cabin were stretching me.

I looked back at Casey and my mouth dropped open. The peaceful, if active, tableau of cowboy, horse, and cattle had broken into a wild scene of disaster. Cattle were scattered in all directions and running through the middle of them, flat out, were Casey and the sorrel colt. The colt's head was stuck straight up in the air, clearly out of control, and he was running blindly. Casey was jerking on the left rein, trying to bring him around, but the horse paid no attention. He tore through the cattle and appeared to be headed straight for a steep hillside, where the ground dropped off abruptly and was littered with boulders.

My hand tightened on the fence rail. There wasn't a thing I could do. Casey and the horse rocketed off the crest of the hill and lunged down in an uneven gallop. Casey still sat firmly in the middle of the horse, and to my complete disbelief, seemed to be able to guide him a little so that he missed the bigger rocks. For a minute I thought he would make it to the bottom and then the colt stumbled and things happened so fast I couldn't follow them.

The colt was tripping and then the saddle lurched sideways and Casey was hurtling off as if catapulted. The horse was down and rolling, and Casey was lying on the ground. I started running toward him, feeling as if I were moving in slow motion.

Casey's figure was crumpled and still; I ran, legs pumping, heart pounding. Casey moved a little-at least he was alive. I ran harder, stumbling on a rock. When I looked up, Casey was getting to his feet. I slowed to a walk.

"Are you all right?" I was close enough to yell.

He limped toward me. "Oh, yeah. Dumb son of a bitch." He looked back over his shoulder at the horse, who was galloping frantically around the lower pasture, apparently unhurt.

I stared at the horse, too. The saddle was hanging under his belly. "What happened, did the cinch break?"

"Must have." Casey was watching the colt gallop. "He's a pig. Tries that runaway shit every other time I ride him. Guess I better go catch him before he cripples himself, though."

He started to limp in that direction and I touched him on the arm. "Save your leg. I'll get the horse."

Casey looked at me and then shrugged. "Okay. He's liable to be a little touchy about that saddle under his belly."

Nodding, I headed off toward the horse. His gallop had slowed to a lope out of pure exhaustion, I supposed. His whole body was wet with sweat and there was foam on his neck. His eyes were still rolling frantically, and periodically he would jump sideways when the saddle under his belly caught him by surprise.

I walked toward him, talking meaninglessly in a calm voice. "You stupid horse, don't you want me to help you, you need to get that saddle off ... ," etc. I spoke matter-of-factly, my voice telling the horse that things were okay.

He stopped and faced me, his eyes full of fear. He hated the saddle under him, he didn't trust me to help him, but he was also tired and running away hadn't done any good. I saw him hesitate; he thought of running again.

"Whoa," I told him firmly.

He looked back at me, his sides heaving, and I could see in his eyes that he would let me catch him. I walked toward him and took hold of the reins.

The saddle was attached to him by the back cinch and breast collar only, hanging awkwardly and loosely under his belly. Moving slowly, I talked soothingly, and struggled with the buckles, trying to get it off of him. He jumped once or twice, but didn't attempt to bolt with any determination. Eventually I was able to pull the saddle free. Carrying it with my right arm, I led the horse with my left, and headed back toward Casey.

He was already limping in the direction of the barn. I followed him, handing the sorrel colt's reins to him without comment, and slinging the saddle over my shoulder. Casey was walking as if he hurt badly. I wondered if he'd broken some ribs. Something in his remote gaze kept me from asking, though it would have been a natural thing to do. There was, always, a strange tension in Casey; sometimes normal comments or questions sounded odd-superfluous, foolish-in his presence.

I refrained from offering to help him further, feeling it wouldn't be appreciated, and handed him the saddle. Still limping, he carried it into the tack room and slung it on a rack, stopping suddenly.

"Look at that."

I looked where he was pointing and saw that the off-side billet, a leather strap that attaches the cinch to the saddle on the right-hand side, had torn clean through.

"See that." Casey's voice was tense. "Somebody cut it."

For the second time that day I turned to him with the slack-jawed incredulous expression of a cartoon character. "What do you mean?"

"Look at it. It's been cut." I peered closer at the billet. The leather had a smooth straight split that ended in a tiny jagged tear.

Casey was still talking. "Somebody cut that son of a bitch up high, under the fender where it wouldn't show. Left a tiny little quarter-inch strip of leather to hold it. I cinch up, no reason I should check the off-side-and the first real stress that billet gives way. Same bastard did this that poisoned the horses."

I was staring at the billet with the slow, cold realization that this was the saddle I'd ridden in to work Shiloh. If she'd made an especially hard turn, if I'd leaned too far ...

My eyes met Casey's, the shock suddenly personal, and the look in his chilled me. "I'm gonna get that bastard."

Abruptly he turned away, with one of those meteoric mood shifts I'd grown accustomed to. "Come on, I'll buy you a drink."

Chapter FOUR

I followed Casey up the hill to his mobile home in silence, still puzzling over the "cut" cinch. Paranoia or fact? I certainly couldn't tell by looking at the leather billet, though Casey seemed to think he could, but two disasters in one day did seem a little odd. Surely life on the ranch wasn't usually this exciting.

Casey was in the kitchen pulling a Budweiser out of the refrigerator when I walked through the door he'd left open behind him. Melissa sat at the kitchen table, drinking a diet soda and painting her nails a sparkly bubble-gum pink. Her "Hi, Gail," was subdued, and she kept her eyes on her nails. Uh-oh.

Casey looked inquiringly at me and held up a beer.

"Sure," I told him. I wasn't crazy about Budweiser, but I liked it a whole lot better than diet soda, and I knew from previous experience that that was all they were likely to have on hand.

Carrying a beer, Casey stomped off to the couch, hiding his limp, I noticed, almost completely. Wondering what prompted such an effort, I picked up my own beer from the table where he'd put it and sat down, taking in the familiar scenery.

Casey's mobile home was furnished innocuously, providing little useful information to the curious visitor. Boring beige carpet and linoleum, beige corduroy furniture, white walls and ceiling. Casey and Melissa had put up no decorations at all and the lack of any sort of taste was so emphatic it was almost a statement of its own. Casey's house reminded me of the barn; everything was neat and of reasonably good quality but completely devoid of any interest or character. It made sense, after all. Both the barn and the mobile home belonged to Ken Resavich.

"What's Ken doing these days?" I asked Casey, searching for a safe subject in what struck me as a touchy atmosphere.

Casey's eyes lost their remote look for a second and he laughed, his old laugh, and cut it short with a wince. "Making more money. He told me he did real well with his lettuce this year-made another couple of million."

"Sounds simple, doesn't it?"

Casey laughed, briefly this time. "Oh, yeah. Everything Ken touches seems to turn to gold. Speak of the devil."

As we watched, a small white Cadillac pulled into the driveway of the big house up on the hill and a man got out of the car. A short, crisp man in his fifties, with close-cropped gray hair and a conservative light blue shirt tucked into navy blue slacks. He carried a briefcase as he walked to the front door, unlocked it, and let himself in. Ken Resavich in person.

Lights came on in the big house as we stared out the window of Casey's mobile--curtains were drawn. Casey said nothing. I thought about the little I knew of Ken Resavich, which wasn't much, and wondered if Casey liked him, hated him, was indifferent to him. It would have been hard to guess. Casey was a difficult person to read emotionally, and Ken Resavich was even more so. I'd only met Ken a couple of times, but his face had seemed almost wooden-expressionless-though not in any way hostile. I had no idea what he was like, other than he was rich and not an extrovert.

"Ken doesn't look much like a farmer," I said conversationally. "He looks more like a C.E.O., or a colonel in civvies. Was he ever in the army?"

Casey shrugged, his face as blank as his boss's could ever be; something about the inward expression in his eyes made me wonder again if he wasn't hurting pretty badly. I tried a tentative question. "Are you all right?"

"I'm doing fine." His tone was clipped and he took a long swallow of his beer and looked away from me. The message was plain-leave it alone.

Melissa was still painting her nails, ostentatiously absorbed; it didn't take a lot of brains to guess that she was involved in some sort of silent feud with Casey. In fact, all the unspoken vibes in the room were starting to make me feel tense and uncomfortable. No matter what I said it was sure to be wrong.

Finishing my Budweiser quickly, I rose to go. Melissa looked up as I said a brief "Thanks for the beer," to the room in general, and smiled brightly in my direction. Maybe she was trying to let me know it wasn't me she was mad at.

It sounded as if there were a barb in her words, but Casey didn't respond, just nodded affirmatively, if laconically, from the living room. "Come on," was all he said.

Melissa insisted on giving me detailed directions before I left, and I took them down, agreeing halfheartedly that I might go.

As I said good-bye and stepped out the door, I wondered how long it would be before Casey told Melissa he'd taken a rugged fall this afternoon-hours, days, maybe never? What was going on between them-some kind of a power game in which guilt trips were a weapon?

None of your business, Gail, I reminded myself, as I shut the door behind me. Keep your mind on your own life. My own life, my own horse. Shiloh might be wonderful, but she wasn't mine. I drove back to Soquel, up Old San Jose Road, and turned in Kris Griffith's white-board-lined driveway.

Kris lived about a mile from me as the crow flies, but our two places were a long way further apart than that, economically speaking. Her five-acre parcel was all wide, sunny meadowland, and the big house and barn which sat on a knoll overlooking the creek were brand new-natural wood with a gray stone chimney for the house, white-board-fenced pastures surrounding the barn.